Conscience, Morality, Judgment:

The Bond between Thinking and

Political Action in Hannah Arendt

Lenka Ucnik

Introduction
As is well documented, Hannah Arendt begins exploring the meaning of
thinking and contemplative withdrawal after attending the Adolf Eichmann
trial in Jerusalem. After witnessing the trial, Arendt notes that Eichmann
possesses an “almost total inability ever to look at anything from the other
fellow’s point of view.”1 The meaning of this accusation is fairly self-evi-
dent, and it can be taken at face value. Eichmann never once, from all
accounts, displayed the ability to put himself in the place of another, imag-
ine the situation from a different perspective, or think critically about the
time and place in which he found himself. Eichmann’s abstinence from
any critical reflection results in Arendt referring to his actions in terms of,
in her well-known phrase, the “banality of evil” because it seemed to re-
quire neither exceptional wickedness nor depravity, but only a profound
thoughtlessness.2 Arendt concludes that Eichmann committed the crimes
he did because of his profound inability to think about and judge autono-
mously the particular situations of his time.
Confronted with the dilemma of thinking and moral judgment, Arendt
finds her work on public space and the political actor insufficient for

1. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Har-

mondsworth: Penguin Books, 1994), pp. 47–48.
2. Ronald Beiner, “Hannah Arendt on Judging,” in Hannah Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s
Political Philosophy, ed. Ronald Beiner (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1989), p. 97. As
a note, I am not interested in arguments regarding Eichmann’s actions, particularly those
that have arisen following the publication of his diaries. I am only discussing Eichmann as
Arendt saw him at the time.

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Telos 192 (Fall 2020): 81–100
doi:10.3817/0920192081
www.telospress.com
82 Lenka Ucnik

understanding how people think and judge. In refusing to see Eichmann as

inherently evil, Arendt faces a complex philosophical problem concerning
the very nature of moral judgment. The role of thinking and autonomous
judgment preoccupy her inquiries and are highlighted by the question
“why is it that during the unprecedented situation of Nazism some people
are still able to say, ‘I cannot, this is wrong!’ even when everything around
them suggests otherwise?” This question—about this ability to judge in-
dependently, even while at odds with the political and social views of the
time—is a question that Arendt repeatedly asks throughout her later work.
As Bethania Assy argues, the “banality of evil” comes to stand for a whole
slew of problems and inquiries regarding morality and the ability to tell
right from wrong.3
In the alignment of the moral and political subject, Arendt sees a pos-
sibility for change and is critical of the tendency to reduce all social and
political problems according to predetermined ends and verifiable pro-
cedures. For Arendt, it is important to develop an approach that allows
for an understanding of others’ opinions, to see the world from another’s
perspective, and to judge particular circumstances without appeals to uni-
versal dictates. In questioning the relationship between self and truth, and
in putting opinions to the public test of others, Arendt demonstrates that
the world, as a common object of human understanding, reveals itself dif-
ferently to each individual. By changing one’s comportment in the world
in relation to the self and others, Arendt wants to change the nature of ethi-
cal and political thought. The ethico-political attitude that Arendt demands
of us all is a process of continual, critical development with no origin and
no end, but which nonetheless questions consistently and purposefully.
In this article I will look at Arendt’s interest in the contemplative life
presented in her later work and address the relevance that it has on her
earlier interest in political action. Although I will reference all three of
Arendt’s faculties of the mind, I will primarily focus my discussion on
thinking and demonstrate the importance of critical self-reflection in mat-
ters of ethics and politics. To support my argument I will first present a
general overview of Arendt’s account of thinking and also provide a brief
critique of the importance she places on conscience as a safeguard against
evildoing. I will then demonstrate the value that thinking has in a per-
son’s ability to make independent judgments and the role that this plays in

3. For a more detailed account, see Bethania Assy, Hannah Arendt: An Ethics of Per-
sonal Responsibility (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2008), pp. 11–24.
 Conscience, Morality, Judgment   83

ethical and political action. Finally, I will conclude by suggesting that the
ability to think critically and independently is central to ideas of political
resistance and transformation.

Vita Contemplativa: The Life of the Mind

Some commentators see a tension in Arendt’s post-Eichmann work in her
shift from concerns with political action to contemplative withdrawal. My
claim in this section is that such criticisms ignore the coherence between
Arendt’s account of politics and action, on one hand, and her interest in
the life of the mind, on the other. Key concerns with plurality, judgment,
and words and deeds remain constant. However, I acknowledge that su-
perficially there appears to be a shift in Arendt’s line of inquiry from the
late 1960s onward. Arendt indeed is critical of the Western philosophical
tradition’s denigration of the political realm in favor of the contemplative
withdrawal of the professional thinker, and in works like The Human Con-
dition she focuses on reinstating the process of meaning to the plurality of
politics, the public realm, and political action. Yet her writings in the af-
termath of the Eichmann trial appear to set to one side the importance of
action and the public realm, in preference for the contemplative life that
she appeared to have previously criticized, culminating in her final unfin-
ished work, The Life of the Mind.
The main issue with Arendt’s shift is the supposed revelation of a mis-
placed classicism in her separation of the active and contemplative life.
Those wanting to link theory and practice are frustrated by Arendt’s in-
sistence that thinking and acting occupy two entirely different existential
positions.4 Action takes place in the public realm with others, whereas a
necessary condition for thinking is withdrawal. It is true that Arendt re-
peatedly argues against the Western philosophical tradition’s denigration
of a life of action in favor of the contemplative life of the professional
thinker. Yet it does not necessarily follow that her solution must be a uni-
fication of theory and practice. Arendt’s concern is not to bring action
and thinking together or elevate the active life over the contemplative.
Arendt remains skeptical of any ideal put forward where the goal is a
unity between thought and action, or theory and practice, because she sees
it as reinforcing a traditional account of thinking and acting—by framing

4. Julia Urabayen, “Hannah Arendt’s ‘Thinking without Bannisters,’” in Hannah

Arendt: The Recovery of the Public World, ed. Melvyn A. Hill (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1977), pp. 304–5.
84 Lenka Ucnik

action as the means through which thinking (as reason) is realized. In-
stead, Arendt moves from instrumental means-end accounts of thought
and demonstrates how the Western tradition’s focus on the relationship
between theory and practice, the universal and the particular, obscures the
basic experience of thinking, action, and judgment.5
Despite her insistence that action and thinking remain separate, some
commentators regard Arendt’s unfinished work on judgment as the bridge
between the two, and see the constitution of the Arendtian self as compris-
ing the relationship between these three features—thinking, judging, and
acting. Such notions are encouraged by Arendt’s claims that the faculty of
thinking has a liberating effect on judgment, and that judgment is “the po-
litical faculty par excellence.”6 I will discuss the faculty of judgment and
its relation to thinking and action below. For now, I suggest that even if
judgment fails in the unification of thinking and action, as some commen-
tators hope, this does not mean that thought and action are inherently in
conflict, nor does it automatically suggest a misplaced classicism. To oc-
cupy distinct positions is not synonymous with existing in opposition, and
consequently does not reinforce the classical separation of the vita con-
templativa and vita activa. It is not difficult to imagine a situation where
there are two existentially separate positions that inform and complement
one another rather than existing in tension. While in her post-Eichmann
explorations there is particular shift in focus from active engagement, she
remains faithful to her earlier focus on the importance of plurality and po-
litical engagement.
Viewed in its entirety what is revealed is Arendt’s attempt, albeit un-
finished and perhaps flawed, to create a more complex picture of what it
means to be a political agent in the world. Arendt does not replace pub-
lic, political action with contemplative, solitary withdrawal. Rather she
broadens her account of what it means to think, act, and judge politically.
Her later focus is an attempt to strengthen her overall project and does
not contradict her prior position. Additionally, her interest in the impor-
tance of thinking as it relates to action and politics predates her contem-
plative turn after Eichmann. In essays from the 1960s, such as “Thinking

5. Dana R. Villa, “Thinking and Judging,” in Politics, Philosophy, Terror: Essays on

the Thought of Hannah Arendt (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1999), pp. 87–106.
6. Hannah Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Ran-
dom House, 2003), p. 158.
 Conscience, Morality, Judgment   85

and Politics” and “The Crisis in Culture,”7 Arendt develops an account of

political thinking in which she takes great pains to demonstrate how this
type of thinking differs from the philosophical thinking she criticizes. In
brief, the former concerns the formation of opinion by political actors and
is contextually grounded in human plurality, whereas the latter aims at es-
tablishing truth arising from solitary reasoning independent of the public
realm. In these essays Arendt outlines “representative thinking” and an
“enlarged mentality,” which aim at political modes of thought directed at
plurality and opinion rather than solitude and truth.8
To further bolster my claim that Arendt’s detour into thinking and the
life of the mind does not conflict with her work on action and politics, I
turn to the prologue to The Human Condition. In the opening to this book,
which is regarded as her treatise on political action, Arendt claims that her
aim is very simple: “it is nothing more than to think what we are doing.”9
Her clarification of the importance of thinking in this work echoes much
of her later discussions on contemplative withdrawal. She suggests, just
as in The Life of the Mind, that thoughtlessness, understood as the com-
placent repetition of “truths” emptied of meaning, seems to her one of the
outstanding characteristics of the present time. She then says that despite
regarding thinking as the highest activity of which people are capable, she
is unable to deal with this in The Human Condition and will restrict her
study to labor, work, and action.10
Despite the different objectives of The Human Condition and The
Life of the Mind, there are some fundamental concerns present in both
that lie at the heart of Arendt’s endeavors. As early as The Human Condi-
tion, Arendt says that thinking is the “highest and perhaps purest activity
of which men are capable.”11 Yet it is not until her work after Eichmann
that she explores these earlier insights in detail, where her concern with
thoughtlessness, mentioned in the prologue to The Human Condition,
becomes the major focus. Already believing thoughtlessness to be charac-

7. Hannah Arendt, “Truth and Politics” and “The Crisis in Culture: Its Social and Its
Political Significance,” in Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought
(New York: Penguin Books, 2006), pp. 223–59.
8. Villa, “Thinking and Judging,” pp. 87–89. I will touch on the notions of represen-
tative thought and enlarged mentality in the later section on judgment.
9. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1989),
p. 5, emphasis added.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
86 Lenka Ucnik

teristic of modern times, when confronted with Eichmann’s profound lack

of thought, Arendt repositions her inquiry to look at the very notion of evil
and moral judgment. In The Human Condition she explores the vita ac-
tiva, just as in The Life of the Mind she wants to understand the other facet
of human experience, the vita contemplativa, as part of an attempt to write
a treatise on good mental governance.
Arendt is a systematic thinker whose early work informs her later work.
Her concern with thinking, action, and judgment is manifested throughout
her career, and notions of plurality, action, and freedom are consistently
at the forefront of her arguments. Although Arendt shifts focus in later
works to explore the solitude of thought, this does not mean she abandons
her pre-Eichmann concerns about political thinking and action. Regard-
less of focus, whether public performance or solitary withdrawal, a major
theme remains constant: plurality of opinion is necessary for political ac-
tion, and it is important to be skeptical of any claims to the true or ideal
state of affairs. After Eichmann, in her discussions on speech, action, and
plurality she confronts the problem of why people act as they do, rather
than dealing with action itself. To grasp the issue, Arendt moves from ac-
tion to contemplation because she understands that neither should exist in
isolation. Contemplation as considered in Arendt’s later work prepares the
ground for acting. To judge events independently can have political con-
sequences, especially during times when the public space has been eroded
and there is no place for the free expression of competing opinions.

Thinking
Arendt argues that the history of philosophy says a lot about the objects of
thought but very little about the phenomenal experience of the activity.12
Yet, she believes, the critical capacity of thinking must be demanded of
every sane person regardless of intelligence or stupidity, culture or igno-
rance, because of its profound implications for independent judgments.13
Furthermore, Arendt suggests, despite the importance of the thinking
activity, “professional thinkers” never genuinely address the actual ex-
perience and instead conflate the activity of thinking with concerns of
gaining knowledge and certainty regarding the public realm. The ques-
tion becomes limited to professional interests or personal common sense

12. Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind, vol. 1, Thinking (New York: Harcourt
Brace & Company, 1978), p. 81.
13. Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment, p. 164.
 Conscience, Morality, Judgment   87

and focuses on something that is out of order rather than on the activity
itself.14 Instead, Arendt’s account of thinking deals with what she calls “in-
visibles” (or simply abstractions), which are distinguished from particular
objects and events in the world. In general, by thinking about “invisibles,”
such as justice, wisdom, or bravery, Arendt’s faculty of thought searches
for the meaning of these abstractions rather than providing definitions or
precise examples.15
The search for meaning does not have cognition or the establishment
of some fact or “truth” as its end, yet, I believe, it is mistaken to sug-
gest that the manner in which the “invisibles” of thought are taken up
and engaged with are unchanging. I agree with Arendt’s assertion that the
capacity to think remains unchanged; however, the experience of her in-
visibles does not remain timeless. “Ways of thinking” not only affect the
knowledge accumulated that is deemed factual or correct, but they also af-
fect the reflections upon “thought events” when questioning the meaning
of ideas represented to the mind. Even accepting Arendt’s account of the
timeless, phenomenal experience of thought, fleeting and removed from
the world, her account of the unchanging constancy of this experience is
questionable.
Arendt’s distinction between thinking and knowing is valuable in
drawing out the difference between the experience of thinking and meth-
ods of thought. However, I disagree that ways of thinking do not concern,
or affect, the ability to think because the content of thought is shaped by
worldviews and particulars. Arendt’s thinking is removed from the realm
of appearance to deal with abstraction, yet the interpretation of these
abstractions and the meaning that is garnered are influenced by the con-
ceptual framework inherent to a specific time and place. In fairness, I do
not think Arendt would disagree with my claim, but her account of think-
ing and her choice of words do not address this concern clearly.
Despite her urge to nurture the act of thinking because of its connec-
tion to independent judgment, she sees something quite different occur-
ring. Although everyone has the capacity to think, she believes thinking
is something that few people engage in. As she points out in her work
on public, political action, since Plato’s denigration of the public realm,

14. The only outward sign of thinking is absentmindedness, according to Arendt, and
this has an entirely negative connotation and hints at nothing that is occurring internally.
15. In many ways, the faculty of thinking is not much more than the Socratic approach
depicted in the earlier Platonic dialogues, a resemblance that Arendt overtly acknowledges.
88 Lenka Ucnik

personal opinion and multiplicity have been regarded as something to be

organized, managed, and ultimately dismissed. If members of a society
constantly questioned every particular event, there would be too many
conflicting opinions to address. Multiplicity is difficult to govern and to
direct toward a unified vision or predetermined end.16 However, it is pre-
cisely the unifying power of predetermined systems in matters of social
governance and moral guidance that Arendt finds worrying, and poten-
tially dangerous. Her primary concern is that the content of governing
codes for assessing appropriate actions and judgments becomes secondary
to the necessity of having some form of predetermined dictate.
Arendt believes that those who rely on preestablished guidelines most
vehemently are often the first to take up a new replacement if the situation
arises.17 The more firm the reliance on a code, the more readily the assimi-
lation to a new one, because it is the role of the system and not the content
that is of value.18 In instances where the function of a predetermined sys-
tem, and not its content, is of primary importance, people will not find it
difficult or frightening to discard “old” values so long as a replacement is
presented to fill the space. Following a set of customs and norms is not
enough when it comes to matters of moral and political judgment, because
this establishes the possibility of readily accepting a replacement doctrine
that states, “in this instance it is okay to kill”—like in Nazi Germany or
Stalinist Russia—without major contest.
Arendt considers it vital to maintain a critical mindset when presented
with anything offered as a definitive answer or solution to a complex
series of problems. She considers thinking, as she conceives it, to be a
safeguard against the blind acceptance of any prescriptive system, due to
its ability to draw out the undercurrent of unexamined opinions and to in-
vestigate, critique, and potentially destroy hidden fallacies. Arendt also
sees this destructive element in thought as having a liberating effect on
the faculty of judgment, which becomes critical in times when people get
swept away unthinkingly.19 To understand Arendt’s notion of the thinking
activity, its destructive nature, and its relationship to judgment requires ap-
proaching it in two parts: (1) a discussion of thinking as the silent dialogue
16. As she argues repeatedly in her earlier work, this is what led to the denigration of
the public realm in the first place.
17. This idea of thinking independently of outside norms and universals will be ex-
plored in the discussion of the two-in-one.
18. Arendt, The Life of the Mind, 1:177.
19. Ibid.
 Conscience, Morality, Judgment   89

of the two-in-one; and (2) Arendt’s understanding of conscience, where

conscience is the by-product of the actualization of the silent dialogue be-
tween the two-in-one.

Two-in-One
In this section I will present Arendt’s account of the thinking activity in
relation to the importance she places on maintaining inner harmony. To
begin, I look at two Socratic insights: (1) the Delphic maxim “Know thy-
self” and (2) the statement “It is better to be in disagreement with the
whole world than, being one, to be in disagreement with myself.”20 These
two insights form the basis for Arendt’s description of the phenomenal ex-
perience of the activity of thinking and her account of conscience, which
she regards as thinking’s by-product. For Arendt, both insights rely on the
premise that only by knowing what appears to me is it possible to under-
stand my personal relationship to truth. The second insight relates to the
first in that there should exist a consistency between ideas that occupy the
position of truth and particular actions.
Central to this notion of internal harmony is the idea of inner plural-
ity, which is key to understanding Socrates’s—or rather Arendt’s—belief
that virtue can be taught and learned without the need for positivist codes
of conduct. Yet the plurality that Arendt speaks of is not multiplicity but
duality, or the two-in-one. Arendt claims:

The faculty of speech and the faculty of human plurality correspond to

each other, not only in the sense that I use words for communication with
those with whom I am together in the world, but in the even more rele-
vant sense that speaking with myself I live together with myself.21

In short, the dialogical approach between people in the public sphere is,
according to Arendt, similar to the conversation a person has with herself
while in thought. One obvious difference is with the term plurality. While
in public the competing conversations occur among many, in the solitude
of thinking, for Arendt, it is only between two—the self with the self.
Furthermore, in the public domain the focus is on the exchange of conflict-
ing doxa, whereas Arendt’s inner multiplicity aims at cohesion. Strictly
20. Plato, Gorgias 482c.
21. Hannah Arendt, “Philosophy and Politics,” Social Research 57, no. 1 (1990):
185–86. Arendt suggests that the axiom of contradiction founded by Aristotle is traceable
to this Socratic discovery.
90 Lenka Ucnik

speaking, both many and two are plural, yet the conversation between
many and two are not necessarily the same. With multitudes come differ-
ing and conflicting viewpoints, and unity is never completely achievable;
with the inner duality of Arendt’s thinking, there are only two sides, which
are either in unity or discord. Arendt does not see this as a problem, nor
does she even point out the difference. For her, the importance is in the di-
alogic approach, the asking and answering of questions.
The inner duality, the silent dialogue between me and myself, forms
the experiential ground for Arendt’s idea of conscience, and by extension
morality. During this inner dialogue the self divides to become a kind of
sparring partner. Arendt writes, “It is this duality of myself with myself
that makes thinking a true activity, in which I am both the one who asks
and the one who answers.” Thinking becomes critical and dialectical; it is
a “traveling through words.”22 Her entire understanding rests on the prem-
ise of maintaining inner harmony, which is only possible if the two-in-one
remain friends. Yet if this premise is rejected, Arendt’s notion of con-
science, wherein inner unity is key, breaks down. I will look at this more
closely below, however I will first discuss inner duality in more detail.
In much the same way as Socrates questions his fellow citizens, for
Arendt the two-in-one questions the meaning of commonly held beliefs.
In this instance the “I” is the one who both asks and answers. Similar to
Socrates the midwife, internal cross-examination serves to break down
norms without positing ultimate answers. By talking things through,
Socrates wants to make others aware of underlying and unexamined truths
in their doxa.23 Talking something through is result enough. This type of
dialogue, which does not require a conclusion to be meaningful, is some-
thing that is only experienced among friends. As Arendt writes:

By talking about what is between them, it becomes ever more common

to them. It gains not only its specific articulateness, but develops and ex-
pands and finally, in the course of time and life, begins to constitute a
little world of its own which is shared in friendship.24

Arendt suggests that Socrates tries to make friends in the Greek polis,
where there is a continual contest of all against all. By establishing a com-
mon world based on an understanding of friendship where people approach
22. Arendt, The Life of the Mind, 1:185.
23. Arendt, “Philosophy and Politics,” p. 81.
24. Ibid., p. 82.
 Conscience, Morality, Judgment   91

one another as friends rather than opponents, Socrates tries to understand

the truth inherent in each person’s doxa.25 It is important to note that in
these discussions Socrates’s interlocutors regard what they say not as ex-
pressions of personal opinion but as claims to universal truth. However,
through this dialogic process Socrates demonstrates that what first begins
as ultimate truth is an expression of opinion. In so doing, the unques-
tioned assumptions are made manifest, and the work of establishing what
a person actually believes, and their personal relationship to truth, begins.
Similarly, the two-in-one that comes to life in the Arendtian activity of
thinking engages in the same maieutic process that Socrates uses in dia-
logue with his fellow citizens.
The notion of friendship is fundamental both to Socrates’s dialogic
approach with his fellow citizens and to the internal dialogue of the two-in-
one. In the polis, it is as friends that Socrates and his interlocutors engage
in open dialogue, and similarly this notion of friendship is a central tenet
in Arendt’s account of thinking. However, the friendship between citi-
zens in the polis means listening and accepting others’ conflicting doxai,
whereas with thinking the basic rule for maintaining a harmonious rela-
tionship between the two-in-one is through the avoidance of internal con-
tradiction. Just as neither faculty of the mind should dominate another, so
too should neither sparring partner silence or dominate the other.26 Arendt
goes so far as to say that it is a characteristic of “base people” to avoid
their own company because the soul is in rebellion against itself. After all,
what kind of dialogue can be conducted when the two-in-one are at war?27
With the two-in-one, unity and internal agreement are central because the
sparring partner who comes to life when alert and alone is only escapable
by stopping the thinking activity and returning to the world. Unlike friend-
ship in the polis, where difference is necessary, in the two-in-one differ-
ence is negative and produces inner disharmony.

Conscience
Thinking, considered in terms of the two-in-one, forms the basis of Arendt’s
conception of conscience. Arendt uses conscience in a very specific sense.
25. Ibid., pp. 82–84.
26. Arendt, The Life of the Mind, 1:187–88.
27. “It is a characteristic of ‘base people’ to be ‘at variance with themselves’ . . . and
of wicked men to avoid their own company; their soul is in rebellion against itself. . . . What
kind of dialogue can you conduct with yourself when your soul is not in harmony but at
war with itself?” Arendt, The Life of the Mind, 1:189.
92 Lenka Ucnik

It is not the divine word of God or the lumina natural. Arendt’s idea of
conscience differs from its use in moral and legal matters because it is
not ever-present but only appears in times of solitude when the self di-
vides and the two are in disagreement, causing internal contradiction.
Arendtian conscience is not the conscience commonly depicted in chil-
dren’s cartoons, where on one shoulder sits the “bad” self who encourages
the satisfaction of desires to the detriment of all else, and on the other sits
the “good” self, the voice of conscience, reminding the character about
the right course of action. Conscience, for Arendt, is better conceived as
an afterthought that is only aroused when the two-in-one are no longer
friends.28
In Arendt’s conception, conscience is not ever-present and only man-
ifests during the activity of thinking when the harmonious relationship
of the two-in-one is disrupted. The inescapability of the inner sparring
partner that presents itself once immersed in the activity of thought is pre-
cisely why Socrates says, “It would be better for me that my lyre or a
chorus I direct were out of tune and loud with discord . . . rather than I,
being one, should be out of tune with myself and contradict myself.” Con-
science is the “anticipation of the fellow who awaits you if and when you
come home,” and its satisfaction becomes a question of being able to live
with yourself when in solitude.29 Similarly, once leaving contemplative
withdrawal and returning to the world, Arendt’s depiction of conscience
disappears because the internal dialogue of the two-in-one is silenced.
Arendtian conscience is a by-product of the thinking activity that
results when the two-in-one are no longer friends. Arendt believes that
conscience, characterized in this way, is not dependent on predetermined

28. “Conscience, as we use it in moral and legal matters, supposedly is always pres-
ent within us, just like consciousness. And this conscience is also supposed to tell us what
to do and what to repent of; it was the voice of God before it became the lumen naturale
or Kant’s practical reason. Unlike this conscience, the fellow Socrates is talking about
has been left at home; he fears him . . . as something that is absent. Conscience appears
as an afterthought, that thought which is aroused either by crime . . . or by unexamined
opinions, . . . or as in the anticipated fear of such after-thoughts. This conscience, unlike
the voice of God within us or the lumen naturale, gives no positive prescriptions . . . [con-
science] only tells [you] what not to do.” Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment, p. 187;
Arendt, The Life of the Mind, 1:190–91.
29. Arendt, The Life of the Mind, 1:191. For a similar argument, see Jerome Kohn,
“Evil and Plurality: Hannah Arendt’s Way to The Life of the Mind, I,” in Hannah Arendt:
Twenty Years Later, ed. Larry May and Jerome Kohn (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996),
pp. 168–69.
 Conscience, Morality, Judgment   93

codes or what she refers to as “bannisters.” At the core of her morality is

the idea of abstention aimed at the avoidance of inner discord, rather than
the cultivation of positive virtues. Just as Arendt’s account of thinking
can lead to negative results because it does not discover ultimate truths
or establish new creeds, conscience is also negative in that it does not
determine a blueprint for morally acceptable behavior to command per-
sonal actions. Arendt considers the inner harmony of the two-in-one to
be a protective measure against injustice. In striving to avoid personal
contradictions, Arendt’s conscience is intended to be a safeguard against
wrongdoing.30 Apart from avoiding inner contradiction, there is no other
golden rule to follow.
Thinking understood as a critical activity is appealing because it sug-
gests potential liberation from unquestioned dependence on governing
principles and preestablished dictates. However, Arendt’s need to make
this faculty a safeguard against evildoing by connecting thinking to con-
science seems to undermine her defense of multiplicity and particulars.
Jerome Kohn observes that Arendt’s conscience concerns the ability to
live with oneself rather than a transcendent claim to what is right.31 Yet
by including a protective feature in her account of thinking that could
prevent people from performing atrocities, Arendt creates a picture of con-
science that opposes her stress on the importance of judging particular
instances without subsuming these under universals. It seems reasonable
that thoughtful, critical engagement with the world could make it far less
likely for people to get swept away by rhetoric and clichés, blindly replac-
ing one set of bannisters with another. However, to argue that this inner
dialogue could be a guarantee against wrongdoing relies on a very specific
account of the constitution of a self—one that Arendt does not adequately
defend.
In matters of judgment Arendt rejects appeals to universal principles,
yet when describing the necessary harmony of the two-in-one she relies
heavily on Kant’s categorical imperative. Kohn goes as far as to say that
in Kant’s categorical imperative Arendt finds “the strongest of all expla-
nations of the phenomenon of ‘conscience,’ itself an experience of inner
plurality.”32 In “Some Questions of Moral Philosophy,” Arendt argues that
Kant’s categorical imperative concerns moral conduct rather than moral

30. Villa, Politics, Philosophy, Terror, p. 211.

31. Kohn, “Evil and Plurality,” p. 169.
32. Ibid., pp. 169–70.
94 Lenka Ucnik

knowledge, in that it acts as a “compass” pointing out right and wrong,

and is available to everyone.33 Arendt considers Kant one of the greatest
modern moral philosophers because, like Socrates, he does not take re-
course to transcendent standards. However, she is critical of what she sees
as Kant’s ultimate standard: to be responsible to oneself. Arendt appropri-
ates Kant’s categorical imperative in her account of conscience, but she
also wants to retain the notion of plurality and extend conscience beyond
just a response to oneself.
Arendt’s account of thinking, and the related notion of conscience,
rests heavily on the notion of consistency. Applying the Kantian categorical
imperative, inner harmony is sustained in the synthesis of a particular act
and the idea of elevating that act to a universal. The harmonious unity of
the two-in-one relies on the avoidance of internal contradictions. The self
that divides during contemplative withdrawal must remain in agreement.
Arendt uses murder to highlight the connection between the categorical
imperative and her version of the two-in-one. If committing a particular
murder, and then deciding that this particular act should not be elevated
to a universal standard, the two-in-one that comes to life during the activ-
ity of thinking is now in disharmony. As Arendt definitively asserts, and as
her example in Richard III demonstrates, “of course” she would not want
to be in the company of a murderer, and yet when the self splits in two this
is precisely the company she would keep. By equating inner harmony with
consistency, Arendt explores the possibility of whether by engaging in the
critical activity of thinking a person could abstain from wrongdoing be-
cause of the need to maintain a unity with the self.34
Kant’s categorical imperative concerns self-reflection, independent of
things that arise from outside of the self. The idea of a personal reason in-
dependent of objects of inclination allows Kant to assert that to obey the
laws personally given in the categorical imperative it would not be pos-
sible to do wrong. Although Arendt’s account of thinking is removed from
the world of appearances and deals with “invisibles,” she also definitively
connects this activity with the faculty of judgment, which is always in the
world, dealing with plurality and particulars. As such, even when removed
33. Hannah Arendt, “Some Questions of Moral Philosophy,” Social Research 61,
no. 4 (1994): 751–52.
34. “Could the activity of thinking as such, the habit of examining whatever happens
to come to pass or to attract attention, regardless of results and specific content, could this
activity be among the conditions to make men abstain from evil-doing or even actually
‘condition’ them against it?” Arendt, The Life of the Mind, 1:5.
 Conscience, Morality, Judgment   95

from the world of appearances and dealing with abstractions, thinking is

not completely free of the objects outside of it. Arendt’s declaration in
“Thinking and Moral Consideration” that “of course” no one would want
to be in the presence of a murderer only holds up if maintaining an auton-
omy from anything or any person “outside” the self, which Kant speaks
of, when positing a universal maxim.35 As soon as such autonomy from
the outside is compromised, it becomes possible to imagine some people,
depending on the situation, having no problem being in the company of a
particular murderer and maintaining a perfectly harmonious friendship.
To declare a particular act wrong in itself suggests an ultimate bound-
ary that must not be crossed. Yet as Arendt points out in discussions about
political action, nothing is black and white, and the gray holds many pos-
sibilities. Just as it is possible to imagine that not all people who steal are
necessarily thieves—the popular example of a man stealing medicine for
his dying wife, for instance—so too is it possible to say that not all peo-
ple who kill are necessarily murderers. Although the dialogic feature of
Arendt’s two-in-one may prevent people from unthinkingly performing
acts of wrongdoing, it does not necessarily follow that all those engaged
in this activity will reach the same conclusions. Arendt’s likely defense
against this criticism is that a person must not make an exception of her-
self. Just as the thief in Kant’s example makes an exception of himself
because he would be unwilling to make “thou shalt steal” a universal
maxim, so too a person cannot make herself an exception to avoid inner
contradiction. Although this line of defense is reasonable, it contradicts
Arendt’s viewpoints about the public-political world, where she advocates
judging particular instances rather than subsuming them under universals.
If Arendt’s belief in the liberating effect of thinking on the faculty
of judgment holds true, then perhaps it is also possible for judgment to
affect thought. I intentionally conflate Arendt’s discussions on moral judg-
ment and the judgment of particulars because in some way I see them
as connected, since her judgment of what is right and wrong in a par-
ticular situation also frequently involves making moral judgments—as is
shown in the assertion mentioned at the start of this article, “I cannot, this
is wrong!” Arendt’s thinking activity searches for the meaning of ideas

35. Arendt, “Some Questions of Moral Philosophy,” pp. 756–58. “It is better for you
to suffer than to do wrong because you can remain the friend of a sufferer; who would want
to be the friend of and have to live together with a murder? Not even a murderer.” Arendt,
Responsibility and Judgment, p. 185. See also Kohn, “Evil and Plurality,” p. 170.
96 Lenka Ucnik

such as justice and virtue, whereas the faculty of judgment deals with the
world of particulars once removed from the ideal realm of thought. Yet I
suggest that just as thinking affects the faculty of judgment in the world
of appearances, so too does the world of appearances affect the question
of meaning regarding ideas of justice, virtue, and so on. The two continu-
ously reinforce one another, and as such I occasionally conflate Arendt’s
accounts of moral judgment and judgment of particulars. Arendt considers
the relationship between the faculties of thought and judgment extremely
important because it is through judgment that thought reenters the public
realm. However, her account is unilateral, where effects only occur from
thinking to judgment. Nowhere does she entertain the possibility that the
faculty of judgment could in some way also affect thinking. If this were
indeed the case, perhaps Arendt’s notion of conscience as the avoidance of
inner conflict would not be so straightforward, and a more complex idea
of what a good and just act entails may need to be developed. Her need
to identify a feature in thought that conditions people against wrongdoing
leads her to insert a universal standpoint independent of the multiplicity
of the public realm.
Arendt’s account of thinking and conscience seems to combine con-
tradictory claims. She argues, in no uncertain terms, that thinking has a
liberating effect on the ability to independently judge particular circum-
stances. Yet her incorporation of Kant’s categorical imperative, in her
account of conscience and inner harmony, creates a problem because it
relies on an idea of self-reflection that is independent of things arising
from outside of the self. In fairness, as Seyla Benhabib points out, Arendt
successfully unites these two positions in her discussions of reflexive
judgment and the public realm. Arendt allows for such a universalist-con-
textual standpoint by transforming the Kantian maxim from “act in such
a way that the maxim of your actions can be a universal law of nature” to
“act in such a way that the maxim of your actions takes into account the
perspective of everyone else in such a way that you would be in a position
to ‘woo their consent.’”36 However, the key to the success of combining a
universal position with particular contexts in Arendt’s reflexive judgment
is her stress on the multiplicity of perspectives that need to be “wooed.”
Arendt too readily assumes that the desire for consistency is suffi-
cient for developing a principled moral standpoint. A problem arises when

36. Seyla Benhabib, “Judgment and the Moral Foundations of Politics in Arendt’s
Thought,” Political Theory 16, no. 1 (1988): 43.
 Conscience, Morality, Judgment   97

Arendt tries to equate the plurality in the public realm with inner duality—
because of the absence of multiple perspectives to be “wooed.” Managing
the harmony between the internal two of conscience is not the same as talk-
ing among friends and wooing the consent of many. There are no multiple
perspectives; there is only agreement or discord. Where Arendt recognizes
the principle of “enlarged thought” as it relates to multiplicity and judg-
ment in the public-political realm, her account of conscience depends on
the avoidance of disagreement.37 All that remains is a tension between the
concrete act and the universal maxim needed to be upheld. Furthermore,
this idea of inner harmony relies on a particular conception of the self that
is not necessarily shared by all. As Walt Whitman famously wrote, “Do I
contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain
multitudes.”38 Even if one refutes my argument that Arendt’s account of
conscience depends on a universalist standpoint, one must at least accept
that she appeals to some form of humanism. It is presumptuous of Arendt
to believe that certain acts would create inner discord in all those who
partake in the thinking enterprise. In her desire to make thinking guard
against wrongdoing, Arendt anchors her account too heavily on an inner
unity dependent on universal notions rather than particular circumstances,
and in so doing she undermines her outright rejection of universal princi-
ples in matters of moral and political judgment.
Jacques Taminiaux has a different take on the problem of inner har-
mony. He suggests that the focus needs to be on learning to appear to your-
self as you would like to appear to others, and they to you.39 Taminiaux
emphasizes that inner harmony concerns a person being truthful to his
doxa and that there is no conflict between private and public appearance.
This is not dissimilar to the notion of living your truth through actions and
deeds, which Arendt discusses in relation to the realm of political actors.
In this instance, as long as a person is willing to appear to others as to him-
self, it seems that appeals to inner unity are not necessary. Harmony is the
consistency between beliefs and actions, and in its most simple form it is
the idea that a person is as he does. The moment that public persona dif-
fers from private, doxa is no longer truthful. Perhaps, if wishing to retain
37. Ibid., p. 44.
38. Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” in Leaves of Grass and Selected Prose, ed.
John Kouwenhoven (New York: Modern Library, 1950), stanza 51, 74; cited in Benhabib,
“Judgment and the Moral Foundations of Politics in Arendt’s Thought,” p. 44.
39. Jacques Taminiaux, The Thracian Maid and the Professional Thinker: Arendt and
Heidegger (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1997), p. 176.
98 Lenka Ucnik

Arendt’s notion of inner harmony, it can be argued that discord exists when
there is conflict between public acts and private thoughts. The criteria of
the two remaining friends are dependent on the willingness to publicly
display the conclusions discovered while in solitude. I am more inclined
to accept this idea of harmony where expressions of personal ideas of right
and wrong are still manifest, but there is no need for universal maxims.
Despite failing to provide a convincing account of a feature in thought
that would condition people against wrongdoing, Arendt presents a per-
suasive argument about how such critical thinking would make it far less
likely for people to unthinkingly participate in events. Thinking not only
develops a critical relationship to the self and truth, it also concerns living
and revealing that truth to others. Yet whether thinking forms the basis for
a principled moral standpoint is debatable. Arendt’s need to find a safe-
guard in thought overshadows her concerns with multiplicity and with the
judgment of particular circumstances irrespective of universal maxims.
The coherence between public acts and private thoughts retains Arendt’s
account of thinking without recourse to Kant’s categorical imperative. If
there is a synthesis between personal beliefs and public acts, the internal
harmony of the two-in-one remain; but if there is contradiction in times of
contemplative withdrawal, the two-in-one will be in conflict.
Regardless of my issue with Arendt’s account of conscience and her
push to somehow make thinking a safeguard against evildoing, I believe
her account of thinking does have important consequences for both politi-
cal and ethical engagement. The inability to question fundamental values
stifles genuine critical analysis by limiting different possibilities or ap-
proaches to the complexities within the world. Exploring themes of critical
self-development as a means of resistance, aimed at transgressing current
configurations, Arendt promotes a critical engagement between self and
world to counter universally applicable moral and political structures. She
approaches notions of self, ethics, and political action as ends in them-
selves, and not as a means to achieving a preestablished goal.

Conclusion: Ethical and Political Action

In earlier works, Arendt approaches the problem of universally applicable
moral and political structures by developing an account of performative
political engagement, where political actors continually present opinions
to be publicly judged by other political actors. In later works, Arendt de-
velops her account of thinking as a means to test commonly held beliefs
 Conscience, Morality, Judgment   99

and worldviews. In both approaches, the dynamic process of developing

a personal relationship to truth guides and informs ethical and political
engagement. Critical thinking, political struggle, and judging particulars
without recourse to universal principles make the space for resistance and
transformation possible. Truth, freedom, and the ethico-political self are
all viewed as processes, rather than as predetermined systems or concepts,
that aim to destabilize ossified structures and prevent the imposition of
others.
Arendt develops a relational account of ethics and politics based on
plurality and difference, and she opposes the organization of multiplicity
under a single, unifying ideal. The concern with unifying systems is that
everything becomes viewed through a single orientation that guides meth-
ods of inquiry as well as outcomes. Ultimately, the problem is not so much
with the specifics of any given system but the inability to entertain alter-
native approaches or to critique the possible limitations of whatever moral
and political system is deemed most effective. In Arendt transformative
events occur in the unpredictable interplay of divergent and complex ar-
rangements. Radical political or social change cannot necessarily arise
when differences are united under a singular idea. The problem Arendt
identifies with the dependence on a prescriptive system is that it prohib-
its the possibility of different sets of relations from manifesting. It is for
this reason that Arendt embraces the notion of multiplicity. Instead of si-
lencing difference according to predetermined categories, it is important
to question the meaning of certain behaviors and conditions, and to allow
different viewpoints, voices, and ideas to rise up so as to create space for
genuine change.
Central to Arendt’s critical exploration of the dynamic, critical atti-
tude is an openness to examining ideas and systems that shape personal,
social, and political understanding. In the attempt to critically engage with
the prevailing guiding principles and systems of knowledge, the focus
shifts from a passive acceptance of norms toward ongoing critique. Inves-
tigation becomes continual critical inquiry into the connections between
systems and particular events, and the meaning this has for personal re-
sponsibility and judgment.
For Arendt this critical attitude, which judges anew each particular
circumstance, is a process of continual labor because the critical task of
thinking is fundamentally destructive. She claims thinking has an “under-
mining effect on all established criteria, values, measurements of good and
100 Lenka Ucnik

evil, in short, on those customs and rules of conduct we treat of in mor-

als and ethics.”40 Arendt is not interested in establishing a new ethical or
political structure but instead advocates a particular attitude to living that
questions the meaning of world-building systems and points of view. Only
with an openness to endless critique and the ongoing search for meaning
is it possible to think, judge, and act independently, to use Arendt’s termi-
nology, and make space for political, ethical, and personal transformation.

40. Arendt, The Life of the Mind, 1:175.